JEC: The Microfoundations Hoax: "When I call 'microfoundations' a hoax, I'm not kidding around. The only question is, what proportion of macroeconomists have perpetrated this hoax upon themselves, and what proportion has known this all along..."

Must-Read: I believe Paul Krugman is right here: It looks as though Donald Trump's preferences are having very little effect on the policies of his own administration: Paul Krugman: Infrastructure Delusions: "There will be no significant public investment program...

Must-Read: IMHO, the bigly mistake was that neither Obama nor Emmanuel ever internalized the necessity of ending meetings with the Rubin Question: "What, two years from now, might we be desperately wishing we had done here today?" Rubin calls this the "probabilistic framework". Whatever the name, it is essential--and Obama did not have it... Gillian Tett: Obama and the Audacity of Hindsight: "It is tempting to point out all the things that Obama could or should have done better...

Must-Read: Trump's Republican Party: not the party of enterprise: It is the party of rent-seekers with something to lose and of would-be rent seekers with something to gain... Luigi Zingales: Donald Trump’s Economic Policies: Pro-Business, Not Pro-Market: "Trump is eliminating lobbyists by putting them in charge of all departments...

Should-Read: What was my most prized and (I thought) original insight of 1991--one that I worked hard to discover and document in DeLong and Shleifer, "Princes and Merchants"--was, to Charlie Wilson 25 years earlier, a throwaway half paragraph: Charles Wilson (1967): Trade, Society, and the State: "The two areas which in 1500 represented the richest and most advanced concentrations...

Recent and Worth Highlighting...

About Brad DeLong

The Most-Recent Thirty

We Are with Her!

Looking Forward to Four Years During Which Most if Not All of America's Potential for Human Progress Is Likely to Be Wasted

With each passing day Donald Trump looks more and more like Silvio Berlusconi: bunga-bunga governance, with a number of unlikely and unforeseen disasters and a major drag on the country--except in states where his policies are neutralized.

Nevertheless, remember: WE ARE WITH HER!

Blogging: What to Expect Here

The purpose of this weblog is to be the best possible portal into what I am thinking, what I am reading, what I think about what I am reading, and what other smart people think about what I am reading...

"Bring expertise, bring a willingness to learn, bring good humor, bring a desire to improve the world—and also bring a low tolerance for lies and bullshit..." — Brad DeLong

"I have never subscribed to the notion that someone can unilaterally impose an obligation of confidentiality onto me simply by sending me an unsolicited letter—or an email..." — Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"I can safely say that I have learned more than I ever would have imagined doing this.... I also have a much better sense of how the public views what we do. Every economist should have to sell ideas to the public once in awhile and listen to what they say. There's a lot to learn..." — Mark Thoma

"Tone, engagement, cooperation, taking an interest in what others are saying, how the other commenters are reacting, the overall health of the conversation, and whether you're being a bore..." — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

"With the arrival of Web logging... my invisible college is paradise squared, for an academic at least. Plus, web logging is an excellent procrastination tool.... Plus, every legitimate economist who has worked in government has left swearing to do everything possible to raise the level of debate and to communicate with a mass audience.... Web logging is a promising way to do that..." — Brad DeLong

"Blogs are an outlet for unexpurgated, unreviewed, and occasionally unprofessional musings.... At Chicago, I found that some of my colleagues overestimated the time and effort I put into my blog—which led them to overestimate lost opportunities for scholarship. Other colleagues maintained that they never read blogs—and yet, without fail, they come into my office once every two weeks to talk about a post of mine..." — Daniel Drezner